Is Tim Westergren being an ass?

Earlier this month Pandora finally settled what it would need to pay in order to distribute music.  This was fairly expected after all the guff that internet radio has gotten from the recording industry.  However, there are some interesting ramifications to this.  Specifically, what will happen now that this has opened the door to the recording industry pursuing radio stations for music royalties.

As I’ve previously mentioned, the recording industry keeps wondering why the sales of records are drying up.  While a lot of the evidence shows that piracy leads to increasing sales, they’ve been insistent that piracy is to blame for the shrinking sales figures.  After all,  it couldn’t possibly have anything to with the cost of a record which seems to go perpetually up.

It’d be interesting to see exactly how much revenue Micheal Jackson’s death generated and how much it would have been if the CDs cost the rate of 9.99.   Market demand dictates how much you can sell a record for, if you set the number above this amount, the number of sales will diminish.  The recording industry seems to continually miss this lesson.

That, of course, is neither here nor there on the latest legal battle that Pandora founder Tim Westergren has jumped into.    The Performance Right Act before congress right now is supported by the recording industry, and the recently embittered Pandora.  The fact of the matter is that no matter what Tim Westergren believes, the majority of people are going to believe that Pandora’s move to attack radio for not paying royalties is nothing more than jealousy.  If he were truly concerned about who pays and who doesn’t and whether or not it was intellectually free property, then Mr. Westergren would have pledge support to radio, and hoped that the bill was defeated, and cited that as reasoning to bring the recording industry back to court via support of the public.

The fact is, it’s even surprising that the music industry would make an attack on the radio industry.  If you think about it, getting in a car, almost everyone reaches for the radio in some form or another.   The basis of this argument is that unless your car has been broken into, your car has a radio.  Not everyone uses the internet for streaming music.  Curiously, this might also reduce advertising for local industries that depend on radio for a cheap and viable way to get their message to the local market.  This would be the result of closing radio stations and less air space available, as stations struggle to charge more of their sponsors to be able to pay for the royalties imposed.

The exposure that radio brings on it’s own is more than enough reason not to attack it for royalties in a fiercely competitive industry where radio stations frequently come and go.  For that matter, it used to be not to long ago that the number one way highlighted way by movies to gain exposure for emerging artists was to get your demo played on the radio.  That was invaluable, and that recording industry would very much like to forget that before the internet talent revealed itself through many different mediums, and they’d never know where their next hit would come from.

The questions that really need to be asked here, are why the recording industries needs the revenue of internet or commercial radio?  Is it really an issue of supporting artists who are frequently seen with the best of everything, or is it greed?  Why does Tim Westergren feel the need to support this proposition, and does that reason extend beyond being bitter and furthering Pandora’s subscription model?

The answers to this are probably hidden away somewhere in this mess, but for now, most people will just view this whole situation as just plain wrong.